Thursday, May 31, 2012

Headaches, Hatfield's, and Free Stuff

Well this has certainly been an interesting week. Month really. Between finalizing plans for a photography gig and finding out I get new/additional responsibilities at work the week has been nuts. And things have just been whirling in my brain. Oh, and I did absolutely nothing productive on my two off days. Or that's what my mother would say. In my mind adding 1000 people to my geni.com tree and going through hints on ancestry.com is quite productive.

Now I know just clicking on hints for family trees is not necessarily the good thing or the right thing to do. And I admit to quickly going through them when I should take my time and check the dates and yadda yadda. But hey I'm an impatient chick. Anyway betweem ancestry.com and geni I added about 1000 people to the tree. The merging feature on geni really helped with that. Mind you, you have to pay for that feature but it does help. Then there's the whole who am I related to feature. Since I added all of these new peeps to my dad's side of the tree I wanted to see if any of those changed. They relationship path's didn't change. New ones just appeared. It seems that I'm related to most people on both sides of my tree. Meaning that my parents are distant distant cousins. Safe to say my head was spinning trying to keep everything straight.

I'm not packing up for West Virginia or going out to buy a banjo yet.... Although I am related to the Hatfields (on both sides of my tree). If you follow me on twitter (@bibliophile89) you know all of this already. I've been tweeting during the History Channel special of the Hatfield's and McCoys. At first I was just kind of doing my little accent imitation... it's so easy to get caught up in that... but then it was more of the yelling at the tv/ yelling on twitter and just thinking the whole thing was pointless. Which, it was. I mean all those people were killed over a fight that started with a pig and a Romeo and Juliet romance. And testosterone of course. There was a lot of that going on.

Before I forget I'm going to throw in a little plug for Geni. By now you should all know I love them and that they are responsible for getting that WSJ writer to contact me. A few months ago they offered to send me a free shirt for being so awesome (you all should know when I'm throwing in some humor/sarcasm in by now). So I was like oh thats cool sure here's my address. I told my mom and she was like oh yeah whats the catch? Or... yeah that will happen. Actually that was her response to my "I might be in the wall street journal" comment. And we all know what happened with that.

I received the package a few days ago. The reason it took so long is that there was a typo in the address and was sent back yadda yadda. But they emailed me and we got it straightened out. Well I just figured there would be a t-shirt in there and I would've been satisfied. So I opened it up and le gasp not one but THREE shirts and two pens. I don't know about you, but I love free stuff. Especially clothes. I believe their merchandise is available on their website too if anyone is interested. P.S I'm not working on commission although I wouldn't decline any offered money. LOL. Anyway the one shirt was just plain white with the geni logo on the arm. The second is black with the Geni logo across the front and a mini tree on the back with the words "who's your daddy?". The third is a cute pink tank top with the logo on front and the tree on back. I think that's my favorite so far. If you are interested in buying the tanks run a little small and the t-shirts run a little big. Oh! I almost forgot about the pens. Now normal people wouldn't be excited about pens but hey. The one is just a normal pen with a logo. Blue ink. Writes well. But the other... the other is fun. I love fun writing utensils. If I had my way I would be like Garcia on Criminal Minds with the feathered pens and bright colored stuff. This pen lights up. It glows blue when you click the little button. But all of that for free! I was pleasantly surprised and excited. I can't wait to wear my new gear and get more people into genealogy.

I meant to talk about more things tonight. I really did. I guess it will have to wait until next time. I really would like to talk about my DAR troubles and the whole biological father deal. Those probably have to be two separate posts. Perhaps I'll visit some of those "new" relatives I added in a future blog. Like I did with the Persing's and Bieda's when I first started.

That's all for now folks!

Friday, May 18, 2012

The end of Who Do You Think You Are

First, I would like everyone to know that yes I am alive after tonight's episode. Twitter just cut me off from tweeting. In the last bit of the show too!! How dare they! I had some witty comments and at least 8 more drinks to report on. I can't even view my drafts now because twitter is retarded on my phone and I can't figure out where it is on my iPad. Le sigh. I forget what I was going to say. That's what happens when you actually participate in the drinking game I guess. Especially when the last segment had 4 yalls and we drank to those too. Oh yes last wdytya. Apparently NBC doesn't follow us on the twitter. Otherwise they would know how important wdytya is to us. I mean sure PBS has finding your roots. It's not as fun. There's no drinking game (that I know of). Will they put the show on another channel? Can I view episodes online if I don't get that channel? I mean, it's nice to see that we're not just a lone batch of crazy people stuck on the branches of our family tree. To have celebs be interested in genealogy... It makes it "cool" or something. I mean I'd still do it anyway but hey. I like being able to talk about the show with people too. I mean I can't just hop on a plane and meet people at a genealogy conference. I have no money and plenty of social anxiety. So. Tv and twitter are perfect for me. But noooo. Let's cancel the show. And another thing. It's not common for websites to work together. Especially when both are looking for the same clients. The same paying clients. Wdytya kind of brought two together. Not that ancestry.com was saying hay everyone go to geni! Or geni saying hey go to ancestry! It's more of a pro for geni.com if you think of it. Notice that every Friday or nearly every time wdytya is on they post the celebrity profile so you can see how you are related. Kicker? You need to be a member to see the path. But it shows their support for a show sponsored by ancestry.com. And of course geni probably thinks hey maybe I can get more members if I try to get in with the ancestry.com crew. Face it ancestry.com has more commercials and probably more popularity. But I digress. They still shouldn't cancel the show. Twitter shouldn't block people from over tweeting. Even if they're rambling alcohol induced tweets. Well I should be able to tweet now so I will end this here and pray I made some sort of sense in this blog.